Dr. Iain R. Edgar

The Problematical True Dream

I have written and presented several times at IASD data and analysis of the use of the concept of the true dream in Islam by contemporary militant Islamic Jihadists as well as by many other Moslems. There is also a very considerable database of spiritual or true dreaming amongst indigenous peoples, particularly in shamanic cultures. Also, I have experienced in many ways at IASD conferences and in my own dreamwork practice the common experience IASD members have as to the potential value, even truth, that dream imagery often symbolizes and contains. Yet the Islamic Jihadist dream data, which appears to inspire, guide and legitimate terrorist or holy martyrdom attacks, confounds our understanding of the wholly beneficent true dream experience.

The issues this situation raises are:

- Can IASD develop robust criteria in relation to what constitutes a true dream   Must the message of the dream be congruent with some notion of a universal morality   May the true dream have certain defining characteristics i.e., aesthetic beauty, numinous power, manifest clarity   Does the character of the dreamer become significant as it is in Islamic dream practice   What other criteria spring to mind 

- If the source of the true dream is the non-egoic imagination then what does the seeming contradiction between these differing notions of the true dream mean 

- Perhaps political dreams involve different truth claims than personal dreams 

Overall, the paper intends to outline some of the key issues that a future study of the universal true dream implies.
 

L inda Elliott

Using Active Imagination to Enhance Dreamwork through Dialogue with the Inner Self

The unconscious is a universe of unseen energies, forces, forms of intelligence even distinct personalities that live within us. It is a much larger realm than most of us realize, one that has a complete life of its own running parallel to the ordinary life we live day to day.

We may ask: What just came over me   Where did that come from   The better question may be: What part of me did that   Believes this   Why does this person, sense, or event set off such a reaction in that unseen part of myself 

Despite our efforts at self-knowledge, only a small portion of the immense energies of the unconscious can be incorporated into the conscious mind on their own. To tap these energies constructively, and to find the unknown parts of ourselves, we must learn how to go to the unconscious and become receptive to its messages.

The unconscious has two natural pathways for bridging the gap and speaking through the conscious mind: dreams and active imagination. This conversation comes through the universal language of symbol.

Along with dreamwork, Carl Jung developed active imagination as a method of going to the unconscious and setting up communication with the different parts of the self. Instead of going into a dream, we go into the imagination while fully awake. Unlike passive daydreaming, active imagination involves a dialogue either oral or written between the conscious mind and a dream image. In dreams, events happen completely at the unconscious level. In active imagination, events take place on the imaginal level, which is neither conscious nor unconscious but a meeting ground where both engage on equal terms to serve the greater wholeness of the individual.

When paired with dreamwork, active imagination helps resolve inner conflicts and reaches into the inner self as a deep source of creativity, renewal, strength, and wisdom to bring the total self together.

This interactive workshop will provide a summary of Jungian writings on active imagination and introduce practical step-by-step written and oral methods for class participation. Participants will work in dyads and are encouraged to bring a dream image or scene to begin their dialogue.

 

Jim Emery Yoga Dynamics No Abstract

 

Marcia Emery, PhD

Exploring Intuitive Dreamwork during Transitional Times

Everyone is flowing with the changing tide of transitional times. During these challenging times, you can 't just question with a logical mind. Instead, you have to see the whole picture. The secret for getting back in balance and seeing the whole picture is INTUITION. Intuition lets us ride the wave of rapid change and stay on the crest. Intuition, as Marcia teaches, is that immediate and indisputable knowing. It is the deepest wisdom of the soul, which gives us the broadest and clearest insight into any situation. It is the intuitive mind that will comb through the dream and provide instant understanding.

Applying simple principles of intuition to the dream examples, will show participants how to unravel the transitional message in the dream.   The people immersed in transitions that can profit from receiving intuitive guidance through their dreams include those going through: marriage/divorce; pregnancy/childbirth; career change; loss of a loved one or of a pet; health crises; change in finances; empty nest syndrome; mid-life crisis; sexual orientation change; starting and/or graduating from college; purchasing a new home; and victim of a natural disaster.

In this workshop, Exploring Intuitive Dreamwork During Transitional Times, Dr. Marcia Emery uses her DreamShift method along with other intuitive association techniques to show participants how to easily and effortlessly go right to the dream 's bottom line. Dr. Emery has successfully used this method for decades, to help her clients and students unravel the mysteries embedded in their dream images. One of the steps in the DreamShift is to let the intuitive mind reveal one or two salient symbols that literally jump forward for analysis. Using intuition to freely associate to this symbol will instantly clarify the dream message.

Here's an example: Thirty-year-old Brittney is originally from Mexico and moved to Canada after her marriage. She wakes up with a panic attack after having the following dream: I am at the beach and see a huge wave rising. I am worried that it is going to fall on me and pull me out to sea. I run away so I won 't drown. She titles the dream Drifting Out to Sea  and finds the huge wave  symbol compelling and retrieves the following associations: inundate, menacing, water, drowning. Then she has an Aha to the association, over the head.  She realizes she is in  over her head in the new culture with different customs, another language, etc. As we talk, I show Brittney that the dream is revealing her underlying fear of being inundated and she realizes that the adjustment will come eventually and she won't  feel over her head. 

Does this sound a bit simplistic   It is! In this workshop, intuitive resolutions will be elicited to dreams in order to provide insights into challenging transitional times. During the workshop, we will work with dreams provided by the Facilitator as well as the transitional dreams of the participants.

 

Valorie J. Fanger,

Dreams of Famous Authors

How have dreams inspired authors   The poster presentation "Dreams of Famous Authors" shows how dreams have inspired, terrified, confused, and otherwise affected authors. Each poster focuses on a specific author, relates a dream of the author, and examines his/her view of d reams.

 

Ozgen Felek, PhD candidate

Educational Functions of Dreams in Islamic Mysticism

Although general works on dreams in Islam are not common, dreams and dream interpretations were enormously important for the Sufis, Muslim mystics. For the Sufis, who traveled through the wilderness of unknowing, true  dreams (ar-ru 'y  as-sadik  /i>) were symbolic messages which arose from the knowledge hidden in the in the center of being.   Prominent Sufis such as Suhrawardi (1155-1191), al-Ghazzali (1059-1111), and Ibn al- 'Arabi (1165-1240) attempted to understand the real meaning of dreams. Of them, Ibn al- 'Arabi even developed his own concept of dreams, and his theory of alam al-mithal, which suggests the existence of a third universe between the divine world and the real world, was widely accepted by Muslim dream interpreters. With an understanding of how the Sufis approached to dreams, we can look at the functions of dreams in Sufism to better elaborate.

In understanding the functions of dreams in Islamic mysticism, I mainly work with the dream book of an Ottoman sultan, Sultan Murad III (r. 1574-1595). Murad III was a pious man who was significantly inclined towards mysticism. Just like any regular man within that cultural and social structure, the Sultan believed his dreams to be meaningful, and sent them to a dream interpreter and his sufi master, Shaikh Shuja Effendi, in letter forms, to inquire about their meaning.   His dream book is a 518-page manuscript that contains his dreams, visions, spiritual situations that he experienced, speeches that he heard, and his dream accounts that he sent to his Sufi master, Shaikh Shuja Effendi, in letter forms.

The dreams of the sultan will demonstrate that the dreams were used not only to regulate the relationship between the master and disciple, but also to analyze where or at which stage the soul is in this journey, whereas the non-sufi interpretations basically serve as fortune-tellin g, predicting the future through dreams.

 

Marilyn Fowler, MA and Richard Russo, MA

Leadership Culture Dreaming: Exploring Environmental Issues in the Collective Dream Narrative of Leaders

The ecological crisis that we are facing on the planet can be seen, at least in some measure, as the failure of short-sighted, profit-at-all-cost business strategies and practices. As our planetary society now comes to grips with inevitable results of the current global industrial business paradigm, some serious questions arise.

Among the questions that the presenters will explore in this session are: How does this planetary crisis impact the collective dreaming of leaders in the US   ' What can we learn about the current intellectual and cultural climate among business and organizational leaders today by exploring their collective dream narratives

Using Culture Dreaming as a tool, the presenters will present the results of research with several groups of leaders in California, exploring the collective Zeitgeist present in their dreams around the themes of environment, sustainability, leadership and business practices.

The research involves 30 current leaders in various types of organizations, including for-profit corporations, social entrepreneurs and non-profit agencies.

In a series of Culture Dreaming sessions themed around environmental issues and planetary sustainability, we will explore the collective narratives that emerge from the dreaming consciousness of these individuals serving in leadership capacities.

We are interested in learning to what extent the collective dream narratives of these leaders show any level of concern for or feelings about the environment and also to what extent the dream narratives register any collective emotional response to the current business paradigm or any collective response to the role of organizational leader

 

Kieran Fox with Philippe Stenstrom, MSc; Elizaveta Solomonova, BA; Tore Nielsen, PhD    

Temporal Distance of Memory Sources during Multiple Sleep-onset Awakenings

Background: Imagery of various kinds often accompanies sleep onset (SO). However, very little is known about the nature of the memory sources from which this imagery is drawn.

Objectives: The study aimed to examine the temporal distance of memory sources during multiple SO awakenings, and the ways in which the nature of these sources changes throughout the night.

Methods: A single subject (male, age 23 years), previously habituated to the laboratory, slept two non-consecutive nights (N1, N2). The subject had good dream recall and had been practicing identifying memory sources of his dreams for 3 weeks prior to N1. He was repeatedly awakened from Hori SO stages 4 and 5 by a highly trained experimenter. Hori stages were scored by monitoring C3 from the standard 10-20 electrode montage. A 'distinct ' memory source was defined as a discrete object, person, setting or sound that the subject could confidently identify and recall his last experience of its source. Memory sources were classified into one of 6 temporal bins (see table): immediate pre-sleep, same day, 0-3 days, 1-6 months, 7-11 months, 1 year or more. 34 awakenings were made (N1, n=16; N2, n=18). Three reports were excluded as being 'thought-like ' and devoid of imagery or memories.

Results: A total of 81 distinct memory sources were reported from 31 awakenings and at least one memory source (and as many as 5) was identified at each awakening. Reports produced an average of 2.6 discrete memory sources. 7 reports (23%) produced memory sources from immediately prior to sleep (e.g., lab technician, EEG amplifier), 17 reports (55%) produced memories from within the last 3 days and 15 reports (48%) produced memories from 1+ years ago. The most distant source was 15 years ago. Memory sou rces from immediately prior to sleep always occurred within the first four awakenings of a night (N1, 11:32-12:58 AM; N2, 11:56-12:34), while years-distant sources never appeared until at least the fourth awakening on either night (N1, 12:58-5:41 AM; N2, 1:20-5:15 AM). 22 reports (71%) produced memories from the last 1-11 months; 2 of these were exclusive to 1-11 months ago; the other 20 produced memories also from the last few days, from years ago, or from both. Five reports (16%) produced memory sources from both the last 3 days and 1+ years ago.

Conclusions: Memory sources from multiple distinct time periods can be linked to SO dreaming by a trained participant. The predominance of recent memories during the first 4 awakenings and of distant memories from the 4^th onward is consistent with previous findings that 1) early night REM dreams have more temporally recent memory sources while late night REM dreams have more distant sources¹. The findings may indicate that a circadian process underlies the recent/remote quality of memory source selection for SO dreaming. Such a circadian process is also consistent with the relatively small number of reports referring to both recent and distant memories. The preponderance of reports eliciting memories from both 1-11 months ago and some other time period (and the negligible number with only 1-11-month-old memories) supports the notion that, for SO dreams at least, a separate, temporally intermediate, memory process interacts with a recent/remote process in the production of SO dreaming.

Table 1. Chronological characteristics of memory sources pertaining to sleep onset mentation reports.

DISTANCE OF MEMORY SOURCES	#REPORTS
Within the Last 3 Days (0-3 Days) Immediately prior to sleep Same day Only 0-3 days (no months or years sources) 0-3 days AND 1-11 months 0-3 days AND 1+ years	17/31 7/17 13/17 7/17 7/17 5/17
1-11 Months Ago 1-6 months ago 7-11 months ago Both 1-6 AND 7-11 months ago Only 1-11 months (no days or years sources) 1-11 months and 1+ years	22/31 19/22 5/22 2/22 2/22 13/22
1 or More Years Ago (1+ Years) Only 1+ Years (no days or months sources)	15/31 0/15
0-3 Days AND 1-11 Months AND 1+Years	4/31

Note: almost all reports contained more than one memory source; the subcategories listed are not additive.

 

References

1. Verdone, P. Temporal reference of manifest dream content. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 1965, 20: 1253-68.

 

Kieran Fox with Philippe Stenstrom, MSc; Tore Nielsen, PhD; Elizaveta Solomonova, BA; Jessica Lara-Carrasco, MSc

Vestibular Imagery during Multiple Sleep-onset Awakenings

Background: While the visual and auditory imagery occurring at sleep onset (SO) has been fairly well studied, little is known about the quality or frequency of vestibular imagery (floating, flying, accelerations, head rotations) that often accompanies the transition into sleep, e.g., the common feeling of falling that leads to a bodily jerk.

Objectives: This study aimed to investigate the quality and frequency of various kinds of vestibular imagery that occurred over long series of SO awakenings in a single subject with high dream recall.

Methods: A single subject, a 23-year-old male university student with good dream recall spent two non-consecutive nights in a sleep laboratory where he was awakened multiple times at SO from 11 PM to 6 AM. Awakenings were made during Hori SO stages 4 (alpha drop) and 5 (low-voltage theta wave bursts) by an experimenter trained in on-line Hori stage detection. At each awakening, detailed descriptions of imagery were collected. Vestibular imagery  was defined as any reported experience known to depend physiologically on the vestibular system of the inner ear. Four subtypes of vestibular imagery were evaluated: sensations of head rotation, linear acceleration, floating,  and weightlessness. Flying was considered a combination of floating  and acceleration. 

Results: The subject was awakened at SO a total of 34 times (N1, n=16; N2, n=18). Three SO reports were excluded from analysis as being thought-like  and devoid of imagery of any kind, 1 from N1 and 2 from N2. On N1, 8 of the 15 reports (53%) contained at least one form of vestibular imagery, 3 reports contained 2 forms, and 1 report contained 3 separate forms simultaneously. N1 included reports of 7 accelerations, 1 upward head rotation, a nd 2 sensations of floating or weightlessness. On N2, 4 of the 16 reports (25%) contained at least one form of vestibular imagery; only one report contained 2 forms together. The reports were of 2 accelerations, 1 upward head rotation, and 2 sensations of floating. Out of the 31 reports analyzed, a total of 12 (39%) contained some form of vestibular imagery, and a total of 15 separable vestibular 'images ' were identified.

Conclusions: Vestibular imagery appears to be a very common feature of hypnagogic experiences at sleep onset, occurring far more frequently than is usually reported for dreams (Schredl and Piel, 2007). Interestingly, very few (n=2) rotational head movements were reported. 13 of the 15 vestibular images (87%) involved sensations normally mediated by the otolithic organs of the inner ear (the utricle and saccule), which process accelerations and the feeling of weightlessness (lack of the constant acceleration of gravity). The sensation of angular head rotation, in contrast, is mediated by the semicircular canals. This suggests a strong (but not total) dichotomy between the activation of these two systems during sleep onset: the otolith organs, or brain centers downstream from them, may be much more active than the semicircular canals and their related processing center.

References

Schredl, M and Piel, E. (2007). Prevalence of flying dreams. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 105(2):657-60.

 

Anne Frey, PhD

Relationship Analysis in Dreams for Continuity

This research concerns an in-depth study of characters and social interactions in a 17-year dream journal from an adult woman. Its purpose was to test claims that follow from a cognitive theory of dreams. It began using the search capabilities of Dreambank.net to see if consistency over time and continuity with waking thoughts and concerns found in other studies also holds true for this case. With clarifications from the dreamer and careful analysis of all data, it went on to develop a new understanding of discontinuities between dream content and waking thoughts and concern.

Those who support a cognitive theory of dreams believe in an almost literal continuity between dream content and waking life thoughts and concerns. Sex dreams could be utilized to exemplify this statement. According to cognitive theory, if someone has a sexual relationship with someone in a dream, that would signify that the dreamer is either having a waking sexual relationship with that person or entertains waking fantasies about having a sexual relationship with that person. The premise of this study was a belief that this is not always the case.

The in-depth analysis asked various questions such as those that follow. Is appearance of dream characters strictly continuous with waking life experiences and concerns   If there are exceptions, what are they and what if any themes can be identified to shed light on why these exceptions occur   Are the exceptions deeper or more abstract metaphoric expressions that require more in-depth exploration to uncover the actual connection to waking life   Are the character appearances consistent over time or continuous with waking life, recognizing that in some cases it could be both or neither   Do the dreams of this individual support the cognitive theory of dreams   For example, are violent interactions in dreams representative of waking life thoughts or experiences   The study allowed for fluidity of addressing questions while studying this dream series.

The in-depth analysis of one woman's 17-year dream series provided examples of the discontinuity between dream content and waking thoughts and concerns. This study was built on similar studies that have been conducted, and further advances our understanding of dreams and their specific meaning for the individual. Findings related to unusual characteristics of dreams that had yet to be studied are especially useful in furthering our understanding of dreams and how that understanding can enhance understanding of the individual dreamer. The results of this study offer further proof of the individuality and individual meaning of dreams. It also adds to current understanding of various elements in dreams. By focusing on one individual, further shows dreambank.net as a useful tool for an individual to use in exploring his/her own dreams and enhancing his/her understanding of self.

 

Art Funkhouser, PhD    

Dream Group to Work on Everyday Dreams

A dream group is an amazingly effective way to work on dreams.   It is important, though, that an atmosphere is created in which each person feels him or herself safe.   There is thus no coercion to tell a dream nor to accept what anyone says about the various dream images that are presented in the group.   All dreams are to remain in the group and are not to be discussed with persons outside the group during or following the conference except with the dreamer's express permission.  Each person has her or his own dream language and the group will learn how to ask questions and listen to what the dreamer says in such a way that the message of the dream emerges in a natural way.

 

Art Funkhouser, PhD

Ten Dimensions of Dream Meaning

Dreams are often worked on according to their contents and these can be classified according to various schemes.   For example, Jung spoke of dreams as being subjective and/or objective.  The scheme that will be proposed and worked on in this workshop attempts to elaborate these two possibilities into ten dimensions: four subjective ones, one transitional one, and five objective ones.   It is hoped that those participating will provide examples, both from their own dreams as well as from ones they have heard about, with which to illustrate these dimensions.   It may well be that the participants will wish to modify this scheme by giving other names to the levels being discussed or even subtracting or adding additional ones.   It should be clear from the outset that any given dream may well have meaning on more than one level at the same time.

 

Jayne Gackenbach, PhD and Beena Kuruvilla

Video Game Play and Dream Bizarreness

In this age of electronic media immersion, it is of increasing interest to investigate the effects of media on dreams. The most immersive media experience is video game play with its audio and visual interactive nature and the long hours often required to master a game. In a series of studies Gackenbach and colleagues have been mapping the effects of heavy video game play on consciousness including dreaming. In this study dream bizarreness was the focus.

Dream bizarreness has been variously thought to be the differentiator between waking and dreaming thought, an indicator of creativity, and most recently, a model for solving the binding problem in consciousness. Initially dream researchers attributed a lot more bizarreness to dreams than subsequent analyses seemed to support. However, with the call that dreams are really more like waking thought than different, the nature of such bizarreness got a bit lost. Revonsuo (2006) argues that an examination of the nature of dream bizarreness offers clues to solving the binding problem in consciousness. That is, how does our phenomenal experience of self in the world, or being conscious, emerge from its biological bases. He points out that a dream object does not transform randomly into another object, but into an object that shares many semantic or associative features with the first. In the waking state such associations do not intrude into our consciousness, for they are unable to override the externally supplied sensory information  (p. 247). Thus dream bizarreness offers a rare window into the nature of these semantic associative networks at work without their normal waking constraints.

The question herein is, does exposure to electronically mediated worlds in some way affect those associative networks   Previously we have found that dream content is affected using the Hall and Van de Castle scales in lucid and control dreaming. A hint as to what we might find with bizarreness was that there were more imaginary and dead characters in the dreams of hard-core gamers than in the norms of the Hall and Van de Castle scales. Herein we further explored the potential bizarreness of high-end versus low-end gamers, hypothesizing that they would be more bizarre.

Over the course of a calendar year almost 900 college students filled out the questionnaire. Most were women with 87% less than 25 years of age. All were undergraduate students at a western Canadian college. Three-quarters of the data were collected online in an Introductory Psychology mass testing.

Following reading and signing an informed consent, participants were told that there were 6 parts to the questionnaire. A recent dream was collected first. Demographics were gathered followed by a series of questions about their video game playing habits as well as questions about their dream-type experiences of the past. The remainder of the questionnaire dealt with the dream they just reported, including how long ago it happened, how many hours of sleep they got that night and how many hours of sleep they normally get in order to feel rested. These three questions allowed the selection of only dreams that occurred last night or last week and only from nights where the participant reported being rested. Only 152 dreams fulfilled these criteria and were at least 50 words long. Ninety of these came from low-end gamers and 62 from high-end gamers as determined by four questions. It should be noted that people who have never played a video game are almost impossible to find in a college population.

A judge was trained on Revonsuo and Salmivalli 's (1995) Content Analysis of Bizarreness  scale. This scale identifies a two-step process in scoring dreams for bizarreness with step one being identification of elements in the dream, and only then are these elements scored for bizarreness or non-bizarreness. All 152 dreams were so scored, and in preliminary analysis the bizarreness subscale scores were summed as were the non-bizarreness subscale scores. A 2 (gamer type) X 2(bizarreness level) ANOVA with word count as a covariate was computed on these summary bizarreness scores. Two main effects and an interaction reached significance. As is typically reported there were significantly more overall non-bizarre than bizarre elements in these college students recent dreams (F(1,149)=395.49, p<.0001). Also, high-end gamers had more elements scored as either bizarre or non-bizarre than low-end gamers (F(1,149)=5.45,p<.05). Finally, gamer type interacted significantly with bizarreness level (F(1,149)=12.79, p<.0001). Basically, high-end gamers had more bizarre but fewer non-bizarre elements than low-end gamers. Further analysis into the specifics of these findings will be presented.

The question becomes: Do we take the most parsimonious rationale for this finding or one with some interesting implications   Are gamers ' dreams more bizarre because they are exposed to the bizarre elements of gaming during their waking hours   Or is there something deeper going on   Are their semantic networks more diverse and thus are they more creative in solving the binding problem during sleep mentation 

References

Revonsuo, Antti & Salmivalli, Christina (1995). A content analysis of bizarre elements in dreams. Dreaming, 5(3), 169-187.

Revonsuo, A. (2006). Inner Presence: Consciousness as a Biological Phenomenon. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

 

Jayne Gackenbach, PhD and Beena Kuruvilla

Hall and Van de Castle Content Analysis of Video Game Players' Dreams

Gackenbach and colleagues have been examining the dreams of video game players. Initially these studies examined lucid and control dreams in gamers sleep but then turned to an examination of the content of their dreams using the Hall and Van de Castle system of content analysis. This system was selected because these scales have one assumption: frequency equals intensity. The Hall and Van de Castle method also allows for high inter-rater reliability, has well-developed norms, and uses categories which are pertinent to waking concerns that may influence dreaming.

In an interview study of 27 hard-core gamers, 50+ dreams were collected and content analyzed. These players ' dreams showed a larger effect size for higher dead and imaginary characters, aggression/friendliness percentage and physical aggression than the Hall and Van de Castle norms. But they were lower in bodily misfortunes and dreams with at least one instance of friendliness. Several other variables also showed deviations from the norms. The limits of this preliminary content analysis were that, although the most recent dream was asked for in the interview, in many case dreams were collected from various lengths of time, and that a minimum of 200 dreams is suggested for comparison content analysis.

In the present study, over the course of a calendar year almost 900 college students filled out a questionnaire designed to collect dreams and media use information. Most were women, with 87% less than 25 years of age. All were undergraduate students at a western Canadian college. Three-quarters of the data were collected online in an Introductory Psychology mass testing.

A recent dream was collected as well as various information about video game play history and questions dealing with the dream they just reported, including how long ago it happened. These questions allowed the selection of relatively recent dreams. A second selection criteria was that each dream be at least 50 words in length. With these provisos 229 dreams were identified that were recalled from last night, last week or last month, were 50 words in length, and were dreamt by individuals classified as either low-end or high-end video game players. However, as with previous research on gaming, the high-end gamers tended to be male (Males=61; Females=25), while the low-end ones tended to be female (Males=14; Females=129). For the purposes of analysis gender was collapsed into gamer categories.

These recent dreams collected via questionnaire were then compared to those collected from the interviews of hard-core gamers regardless of sex. In both sets of data there are more males than females; both were college students at the same Canadian college; and both were identified as high-end gamers by the same four questions. The differences are that this questionnaire sample is of more recently recalled dreams relative to the longer recall of the interview sample. Thus a comparison of the samples allows us to consider if relatively recent dreams collected anonymously offer support for the earlier findings.

Of the 24 subscale percentages available on the Dream SAT sheet, in the original interview dream collection set, half showed significant differences from the male norms. In this set of questionnaire collected recent dreams, again half were significantly different from the male norms. In some cases the differences from norms were the same: more familiar characters, more dead and imaginary characters, and dreams with at least one instance of aggression, friendliness, sexuality, misfortune, and good fortune. In this last set of percentages all dreams in both data sets of high end gamers evidenced fewer instances than the norms.

Some subscales show a difference from norms where one did not exist earlier: fewer male/female percentages, more indoor settings, and, for the subscales regarding dreams with at least one instance, success and striving were lower than in the norms. Some differences from norms reported earlier disappeared in this dream set. That is, there was no difference in aggression/friendliness, physical aggression, self-negativity, and bodily misfortunes. Finally, in only one case was the direction of the finding for the recent questionnaire dreams different from the interview collected dreams (i.e., friend characters were higher than norms while in the interview dreams they were significantly lower).

These results will be discussed as well as analyses of infrequent gamers relative to the norms.

 

Aline Gauchat, Baccalaureate student in psychology

Thematic Content of Recurrent Dreams in 11-year-old Children

Recurrent dreams are considered to be psychologically important by dream theorists and clinicians. Although recurrent dreams have been studied in adults, no study has assessed their contents in children. 143 11 year-old children taking part in a longitudinal study completed a questionnaire concerning their dreams. 43 children reported recurrent dreams and provided a written description of their contents. The most frequently reported theme (33%) involved "facing a monster" followed by "death of a family member" (12%).   Themes of "being chased", "being in a car accident" and "having a stranger entering, or trying to enter into the dreamer's house" were each reported in 9% of children. Themes involving the "death of the dreamer", and "walking at night and being threatened" were each present in 7% of the   reports. Finally, "being late" and "animals becoming increasing larger" were reported in 5% of the children's recurrent dreams. Negative emotions predominated in 53% of the dream reports, 42% were affectively neutral, and only 5% were described as being positive. These preliminary results reveal   marked differences between the contents of children's versus adult recurrent   dreams.   These differences may reflect developmental aspects of cognitive and representational abilities.   In addition, the results have implications for recently proposed evolutionary theories of dream function.

 

Sandy Ginsberg, MS, MFT

Revealing the Third Perspective of the Dream by Taking Action

First the dream comes as imagery.   When people awake, they often tell the dream or write it in a journal, translating the information to the realm of language and offering the message a second opportunity to come through to the dreamer.   Switching realms in this way, the dream 's message is given a second avenue to deliver a message.   When dreamers provide a further opportunity, or a third perspective,  they give themselves yet another chance to deepen the message of the dream. This third perspective becomes available when someone manifests the dream in the waking world in some physical way.  It may be by creating art, cooking, building something, or by going somewhere, etc.

The essence of this third perspective is to attend to that part of the dream that nags at the dreamer as if to say, You haven't dealt with me yet.  The telling or journaling wasn't quite enough to help reveal the meaning, and so it calls for more.   Attending to that aspect in a physical, active way is the third perspective  to revealing the dream's intention.

This workshop provides an opportunity to recognize the difference in the various ways of perceiving the dream.   We will discuss the methods that can be used clinically to help the dreamer to translate image to language, and language to deeper meaning.

I was first impressed with the devotion that Dennis Schmidt had when he followed a dream to a South Pacific Island and learned to swim because a dream showed him that he would.  That investment of physical action is not always called for in order to get a deeper meaning from the dream, but often the doing  of some activity can be quite helpful in honoring the message of a dream.

This physical manifesting of an aspect of the dream can be extremely helpful, and I want to demonstrate that by offering an opportunity to collage a dream image that feels incomplete, in order to possibly learn a deeper meaning.   We will also discuss a variety of ways the participants can take their dreams into the waking world and manifest them in order to honor the aspects that are particularly curious.

 

Ann Goelitz, LCSW, PhD Candidate

The Emotional Content of Dreams

It is the hypothesis of this study that the dreams of trauma survivors contain more emotions and more intense emotions than the dreams of non-trauma survivors. It is further hypothesized that the dreams of survivors of human designed traumas contain more emotions and more intense emotions than dreams of survivors of traumas not of human design. Testing a third hypothesis that using both the Hartmann and Hall/Van de Castle scales to quantitatively code emotional content of dreams will confirm hypotheses one and two, these hypotheses will be examined utilizing both scales. Toward this end, the emotional content of trauma survivors ' dreams will be analyzed and the results compared to the emotional content of general dreams. Trauma survivors ' dreams will be examined further. They will be separated into two groups, designated by trauma source, and their emotional content will be compared. The dreams will be studied in an attempt to ascertain what, if any, differences exist between the emotions contained in the dreams. Differences in the emotional content of dreams will be delineated. It is expected that the two scales will obtain similar results.

Although the study will be primarily quantitative, the dreams will also be qualitatively analyzed. Qualitative data will be used in conjunction with and in support of the quantitative coding systems utilized in the study. If the two coding systems do not obtain similar results, it is expected that the subsequent qualitative analysis of dreams will uncover reasons for the differences. Qualitative analysis may also identify new categories for future dream content analysis.

The study will utilize "e 100 general dreams and "e 100 dreams of trauma survivors. At least 50 of the dreams of trauma survivors will be from individuals affected by trauma not of human design, such as life-threatening illness, and at least 50 will be from individuals affected by human designed trauma such as child abuse, domestic violence, rape, and war. The study will focus only on the dreams of women because there are reported gender differences in dream content and in how trauma is processed.

 

Robert P. Gongloff

Determining and Honoring the Themes in Your Dreams

Themes reflect the major issues going on in one 's life. A theme is the important message, idea, or perception that a dream is attempting to bring to your conscious mind. Following are some key questions one can ask to aid in determining the theme of a dream: What is the basic activity going on in the dream   What are the main characters doing in the dream   What is the major issue concerning the characters   What is the apparent or presumed motivation of the characters that causes them to act this way   Theme statements are best determined when they are personalized, stated in the present tense, and don 't just restate the words or actions from the dream.

 

 

Robert P. Gongloff

Morning Theme  Group

Themes reflect the major issues going on in one 's life. A theme is the important message, idea, or perception that a dream is attempting to bring to your conscious mind. Following are some key questions one can ask to aid in determining the theme of a dream: What is the basic activity going on in the dream   What are the main characters doing in the dream   What is the major issue concerning the characters   What is the apparent or presumed motivation of the characters that causes them to act this way   Theme statements are best determined when they are personalized, stated in the present tense, and don 't just restate the words or actions from the dream.

 

Gary Goodwin, MA with David Jenkins, MS, PhD; Carol Dianne Warner, MA, MSW; Lesley Zaret, MSW, Suzanne Carter, PhD

Tips, Tools, and Techniques for Dream Group Leaders (Panel)

David Jenkins, PhD

You are NOT the Dreamer: Someone is Impersonating You in Your Sleep!

This is a look at the distinction between the Awake-I and the Dream-I.  Dream work becomes radically different simpler and clearer when we proceed from the view that the Dream-I is someone with different needs and requirements from the Awake-I.

You wake up in the morning and say "I had a dream last night." But the "I" in the dream lives in a much more volatile reality with a different set of people and quite different rules from that of the Waking-I. The laws of physics, logic, relationships, even life and death are different during the dream.

Furthermore, the personality and the abilities of the Dream-I are distinct. The Dream-I might fly or talk to ancestors but more often, he or she is a gullible, fearful version of the Waking-I a wimp.

To see yourself as just one "I" does a disservice to the person who is living your dream life. Instead, consider yourself as living two lives with two (somewhat) related personalities. The task of dream work is then to help the often-falling-apart-Dream-I who lives the dream, not the well-put-together-Awake-I who tells the dream.

When we accept the inevitable fact that the Dream-I will be back tonight in the next dream and we consider what this person needs to hear, we are actually available to help the Dream-I to live their weird and wacky life.

In a dream group, we take it that the Dream-I is present and listening to everyone's contributions. We focus the discussion not on the meaning of the dream but on the reality in which the Dream-I is living. By offering the Dream-I numerous options, we give the Dream-I freedom to change.

When dream work is taken in this way, the Dream-I will become more self-expressed; dreams will become less stressful, more enjoyable and often ecstatic and erotic.

 

Carol Dianne Warner

In this presentation, I will review the IASD dreamwork ethics statement. I was Chair of the IASD Ethics Committee in 1996 when we were tasked to write a Dreamwork Ethics Statement for IASD, and will share some key points in its development and evolutionary history. I will discuss my experience with some of the issues that come up in the course on online group dreamwork as per my experience with the IASD Dreams and Spirituality group. I created this group in the year 2000, and I have learned a great deal along the way.

 

Lesley Zaret & Suzanne Carter

This paper is dedicated to people who resonate with Alice Miller's Drama of Gifted Child, overachievers who are good at doing and feeling what they think they should, but not so good at sensing or evoking their authentic selves.  It concerns resistance as a barrier to inner truth and dreams and dreamwork as workarounds.   Resistance can appear in dreamwork as well anywhere between the emergence of a dream and the closing words in a session of working with a dream. One challenge in dreamwork is to enable the dreamer, who is the ultimate authority on the dream, to, in his or her own way, glimpse inner truths in spite of his or her own resistance.  Several possible methods that have been helpful according to my experience are high lighted, including staying  with the dream, attending to the body, occupying "monkey mind," and the power of dream group work.

 

Gary Goodwin, MA

Subpersonalities: Our Many Selves That Fill Our Dreams

Dream workers tend to over- or underemphasize the role of subpersonalities found in dreams. Some overemphasize subpersonalities by misquoting Carl Jung. They claim that Jung said that all dreams were about us and not about the external world (Jung actually said we need to learn how to tell when we are dreaming about real people in our real lives and when we are using the actors in our dreams to represent our inner world.). Those who underrecognize the existence of subpersonalities err on the side of looking at the traits our inner actors hold and then trying to link them to some outer event, condition, feeling, etc.

The proper balance and preparation is to know the history of subpersonality theory developed by such people as Carl Jung, Robert Assagiloi, Friz Perls, and Hal and Sidra Stone, grounded by knowledge on how to spot subpersonalities at work in our dreams and daily lives. Once they identified, other work is needed to: understand them, make a place for them, and reconcile them with other, opposing and complimentary subpersonalities.

Subpersonality work makes dream work understandable, manageable, and more useful as learn to decode our inner dramas by recognizing the roles our inner actors play, where they came from, and what future part they might play in upcoming dreams.

 

David Gordon, PhD    

Mindful Dreaming:   Holding the Tension of Opposites in Dreams and Waking Life

This workshop is based on evidence from clinical practice that the relief of symptoms in psychotherapy and everyday life is predicated on the resolution of what Jung termed the tension of opposites the tension between ego strategies conditioned by family and society versus the guiding presence and values of our wiser Self.  

This tension is expressed in five archetypal or universal conflicts present throughout most of our dreams and equally present in the daily dramas of waking life. Every dream suggests one of five ego strategies to be resolved through greater mindfulness of the tension between distraction and solitude; control and surrender (humility); judgment and compassion; attachment and letting go; impatience and acceptance of the present moment. In addition, when clients practice mindfulness of these conflicts in waking life, their dreams are diagnostic of the progress they are making in this effort for better or worse.

In this workshop we devote the first 40 minutes to a didactic presentation of the above paradigm. The remainder of the workshop utilizes a Taylor or modified Ullman group process approach to working with dreams volunteered by participants. The dreamwork process is never intrusive and group members are required to own all discussion of a dream as projection:  If this were my dream... . 

 

Rosemary Gosselin, MSW, NCPsyA and Andr   Kingsbury, RN

Metaphors in Motion: Weaving Dance, Dreams and Art

In this time of global transition dreams can lead us to re-imagine our relationships to ourselves, to others, and to our planet. Dreams shed light on our outworn myths and shadow material and help us engage and trust our inner guide. Our work is influenced by Carl Jung, dreamwork pioneer who saw dreams as a force of nature, given to us for the express purpose of fostering our evolution. He maintained that the world can only be transformed one (dreaming) soul at a time and imagination is the key to change.

We wish to share a unique model of dreamwork we've evolved over the past five years in our rural community. We find this model effective in deeply integrating dream material on all levels  body, mind, and spirit. We combine movement, arts and dreamwork in order to help men and women use their dreams in daily life to work with conflicts in and outside of the group in the service of developing consciousness.

In each three-hour, twice-monthly group, we explore a single dream through discussion and the expressive arts. The group helps the dreamer to be with and amplify the dream energies, safely holding the dreamer in his/her work. Our primary focus is in assisting the groups to engage the unconscious and to develop trust in the inner guidance dreams can bring. Sacred Circle Dance from a variety of cultures centers and connects the group and creates a container, shifting the space from ordinary time to dream time. The dance is used both thematically to set the stage  and ritually to ground the work.

We teach basic Jungian and post-Jungian thought and facilitate amplification of dreams through the expressive arts, dream re-enactment, authentic movement, body meditation, sounding, and working with masks. We look at dreams on both the personal and cultural levels.

 

Dale E. Graff, MS (Symposium Chair); Christian J. Hallman, PhD, Capt. US Army; Craig Sim Webb

Psi Dreaming in Stressful Military Missions and Canadian Wilderness Environments

Dale E. Graff

Psi Dreaming During the Search for an Abducted US Army General

In December, 1981 Brigadier General (BG) James Dozier, Commander of a NATO unit in Verona, Italy, was abducted from his apartment by an Italian terrorist group known as the Red Brigade.   The terrorists moved swiftly at night and took the general to a secret hiding place.   An extensive search team composed of US military and civilian personnel was organized and sent to Italy to work with Italian police in an effort to locate and rescue him.   The Red Brigade had previously abducted high-ranking Italian officials and within a few weeks murdered them.   It was essential that BG Dozier be found as soon as possible if he was to survive his ordeal.

In this presentation, I explain how a series of dreams and synchronicities led me to become a member of the official search team located in Italy as a US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) representative.   At that time, I had just received a management role with the emergent Department of Defense Stargate remote-viewing unit located at Fort Meade, MD.   Part of my responsibilities in the search activity included analysis of technical surveillance data and also to see if psi phenomena of any type could be of assistance in locating, or at least narrowing down search area possibilities.   The Italian police had been receiving unsolicited inputs from hundreds of psi sources worldwide.   I was assigned to analyze them and the responses from Stargate remote viewers to see if they had any potential information for locating BG Dozier 

When in the Northern Italian search location at Vicenza during the wint er of 1982 I began to experience unusual dreams that seemed to relate to BG Dozier"s location.  I explain what may have prompted these dreams even in the stressful search environment, and how their content suggested that they had valid information which included dream maps and specific location data.   I show how I compiled this data and compared it to a topographic map that led to my selection of the city location where it was later learned that he was held captive.     I include dreams that foretold of BG Dozier's eventual successful rescue and the role that Dozier may have had in the specific content of some of these dreams. Even though the data obtained from these dreams could not be acted upon for political reasons, nevertheless, they demonstrate in principle how psi/precognitive dreaming has potential for any type of search project such as locating missing people.   I discuss an issue that often occurs for psi data: What is secret, what is private

In summary, I explain how I was able to maintain a dream journal while in an extremely stressful environment, and review the potential benefits of psi/precognitive dreaming for any situation.

 

Christian J. Hallman

Psi Dreams of US Military Personnel in the Middle East

Between February, 2004 and February, 2005, I was assigned with a US Army Medical Company Combat Stress Control (CSC) unit to the Middle East as a medical officer specializing in mental health.   This unit is unique to current US military operations and was created primarily to help minimize psychological trauma including acute stress disorders and post-traumatic stress disorders (PTSD), which are an unfortunate consequence of combat experiences.   Some of the major complaints of patients visiting CSC were related to not getting enough rest and quality sleep.   During this assignment, I solicited voluntary dream reports from military personnel who came to the clinic.   I wanted to discover what types of dreams they experienced and if any of them related to the stresses that brought them to the clinic for treatment.   Many of the dream reports that I collected were psi dreams.   This presentation summarizes the dream data base reports of 34 psi dreams.   Some of the incidents were intuitions or dejvu experiences.  Some of the psi dreams were of past but unknown incidents unrelated to the current assignment; others were precognitive dreams warning of future situations.  A surprise finding was that there were as many psi/precognitive dreams about unexpected future situations in the dreamer 's home situation as there were of dangers during future military missions.  This suggests that the current military operational environment with its instant connection to home situations via Internet and telephone is actually causing additional stresses for some individuals that in previous wars would not have occurred.

The methodology for electing these dream reports and the various dream categories are summarized.   Some of the psi dreams are described in detail and recommendations are made for follow-on dream data base collection in combat areas where military units are deployed.

 

Craig Sim Webb

The Practice and Art of Precognition

That we are sometimes able to accurately perceive the future is amazing.   Dreaming it regularly is a great challenge that can become a formidable gift and also a hot fire of personality purification.   I have been dealing with this double-edged challenge since age 21 after I nearly drowned on a rafting trip, and I now dream aspects of the future every few days or more.   I will discuss the science and art of precognition, offering various examples and sharing both greater implications about the process of fore-knowing and practical techniques for harnessing its fire.

 

Dale E. Graff

Psi Dreaming During Hazardous Journeys on Remote Canadian Rivers

Since 1969 I have canoed thousands of miles on US and Canadian rivers, with most of my long-distance travels on remote rivers in Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, the Arctic regions of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut.   Some of these Canadian river journeys were over 450 miles long and required 3-4 weeks to complete.   These remote rivers have huge waterfalls and long white-water canyons.  Anxiety that they generate can become a catalyst for dreams that mirror the stress and for dreams that look ahead  by presenting useful information, including warnings of specific approaching dangers. 

In this presentation I describe how dream journaling during these arduous river journeys helped facilitate recall of a variety of dreams.   I illustrate the types of recorded dreams and show how they correlated with the existent situations.   Some of the dreams reflected physical conditions, some were of psi origin and presented potential future incidents and others were about the home environment or some other distant location.   I discuss the practical aspects and the difficulty in maintaining a dream journal when enduring a variety of physical discomfort.   I cite a few examples to illustrate the potential utility of psi/precognitive dreams and explain the basic protocol for experiencing them.  For some dreams, photographs of incidents on the river help illustrate the dream material.

Some of the dream experiences were of unexpected incidents encountered the following day.   One dream was potentially life-saving. Another dream which was lucid alerted me to finding something that was vital for continuation of the trip.   This incident was life-changing and led me to the beginning of my dream-journaling career.

For two of these remote Canadian river journeys, individuals several thousands of miles south in the USA were keeping a psi tracking journal  of my progress on the river. I summarize the result s of these long distance psi/psi dreaming experiment and describe a mutual lucid nightmare that occurred when I experienced a serious traumatic situation.

In summary, I show how some of the dreams related to the safety and well being of my companions and myself while we were isolated in a remote region.   I conclude by explaining how anyone can experience psi/precognitive dreams even when in uncomfortable physical environments, and how psi/precognitive dreams can provide information for us to be better prepared, to avoid or to prevent the perceived future situation.   I provide recommendations on how to distinguish psi dreams from ordinary dreams and how to enhance psi dream proficiency.

 

Geri Grubbs, Ph.D.    

The Archetypal Dimension of Bereavement Dreams

Geri Grubbs' book, Bereavement Dreaming and the Individuating Soul,  presents the death-and-grief process expressed in our dreams following the death of a loved one.   The workshop follows the content of her book, beginning with the sharing of a precognitive dream that she had prior to the sudden death of her 16-year old son, and the dreams that came to her immediately afterward.   She reveals how the archetypes in her dreams and those from three other personal stories not only prepared the dreamers for the upcoming tragedy of death in their lives, but also helped them address their grief and transcend their suffering.   According to Jung, archetypes are the God-likeness in man that are meant to attract, to convince, to fascinate, and to overpower.  It is through the archetypes that life renewal occurs. 

It is quite evident that the bereaved enter a transitional, or liminal, period following a sudden separation by death, and this liminal state is revealed in their dreams.   In Eastern religions, it is believed that dreams cross the realm of sleep for the living and the place of death for the deceased; therefore, encounters with deceased spirits in dreams are not uncommon.   Such encounters, referred to as visitations, may occur for several months or even years following a loss by death, and can be a source of resolution and transition for the bereaved. 

Significant dream themes may come upon the bereaved during the early phases of bereavement, all of which connect them symbolically and psychically with the world of the dead.   Such themes include the death tunnel and bridal chamber commonly seen in near-death experiences, dismembered Osiris, the Egyptian deity of afterlife, the Dark Night of the Soul, a representation of the deep sorrow of bereavement, images of the Self as encounters with the divine, and the death wedding or sacred marriage in which the soul of the deceased, as well as the bereaved, unite with the universal dimension.   These themes will be presented visually through a slide presentation.  

 

Geri Grubbs, Ph.D.    

Meditation and Superconscious Dreaming

Meditation is when the mind and body are still and the heart is open.   Peace and joy comes as a by-product of a daily meditation practice that not only affects our outer life, but may also influence our nightly dreams.   Because meditation opens the mind to superconsciousness, a state of heightened awareness that goes beyond our daily lives, our dreams may become more transcendent, archetypal, and expressive of death-rebirth and the union of opposites.   Such images come from collective and universal realities and have a distinctly spiritual quality to them.   They may address basic existential questions concerning death, loss, and transformation and are often referred to as big  dreams.   About such archetypal dreams, C. G. Jung writes:   They are meant to attract, to convince, to fascinate, and to overpower.   They are created out of the primal stuff of revelation and reflect the ever-unique experience of divinity. 

In this morning dream group, there will be approximately 15 minutes of meditation each day, with specific attention drawn to stilling the body and mind through pranayama (breathing techniques).   On the first day, we will briefly discuss superconscious dreams, what they tend to be, how meditation inspires them, and their significance as symbols of transformation.   The group will then be invited to share dreams that they've had that express the superconscious state to them.   Those who wish to work further with their dream or dream images will enter the group process of questioning and amplification.   The group will then take in the images amplified from their own perspective, meditate on them (with or without guidance, depending on the dream), and when completed, share their personal experiences with it. 

On the last day, you will be given suggestions on how to maintain a daily meditation practice. 

                     

Rev. Bob Haden, MDiv, STM  

Dreams and World Religions: Shadow, Projection and Peace

Karen Armstrong says, Unless there is some kind of spiritual revolution that can keep abreast of our technological genius, it is unlikely that we will save our planet.  The Dalai Lama says, The time has now come for all religions to work together for Peace.  This workshop will explore how the tradition of dream work in all religions has and can play a vital role in this endeavor.

Beginning in the axial age (400-100 BCE), all religions came to the same conclusion that at the heart of all things was the imperative of compassion. All religions have a set of morals that would encourage them to love their neighbor  and promote peace among nations and religions. But paradoxically, all religions also have shadows and project them onto other religions and cultures. Carl Jung says that the most religious places in the world have the darkest shadow (Jerusalem, Bosnia, Ireland, etc.).

This workshop will look at our own (personal and religious) shadows and explore how shadow projections of all religions (collectively and individually) have moved toward destruction and violence rather than compassion. We will then explore how revelations from the dream world and dream work can move us away from violence and towards compassion.

This workshop will be didactic, experiential and participatory. Please bring any dreams that relate to world religions and/or your own (religious and personal) shadow.

 

Rev. Bob Haden, MDiv, STM    

Biblical Dreams and Their Relevance for Decoding Our Nightly Dreams

As we know, all cultures and all religions except for western culture and western religions, honor the dream. Earlier in my life I discounted Biblical dreams. But, after studying Jungian psychology, working on hundreds of my own dreams and others ' dreams, I have a new appreciation for Biblical dreams. I now know, from my own dream experience, that dreams are metaphorical, autonomous, and real. This experiential and didactic learning about the dream world has given me a container in which to better understand Biblical dreams.

As I began to take a second look, I got excited about the metaphorical meaning for the Biblical dreamer, could understand how he/she understood this as God 's forgotten language  and realized that each Biblical dream illustrated an aspect of dreamwork. So, in this presentation, we will look at ten Biblical dreams, putting them into context, exploring the meaning for the dreamer (and us) and giving and sharing contemporary dreams that illustrate the dream method of the particular Biblical dream. 

 

Mark Hagen, MA    

Dreams, Allegory and Dream Vision

In dreams, yours and mine, there is an adaptive  interplay between the individual and the collective. In this dual adaptive process of biologically and culturally  inherited and disseminated (seeded) through generations, literary  Dream Visions such as Dante's Divine Comedy or Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland circulate in the language circuitry of social unconscious communication. This dual generational inheritance of dreaming and Dream Vision provides the communicative foundation for the manufacturing of the everyday dream and everyday life. Dreams are literary texts, biographical documents written by individuals influenced by the cultures in which they live. Dreaming is a mental process that we each have inherited in our genetic make-up, to adaptively sort through the daily experiences we encounter in our environments, and express through the languages learned as we have been educated within our various cultures. Dream Vision reveals the literary psychodynamics of the philosophy of mind and the drama of everyday life. The dramatic analysis of dreams sees the dream text narrative as a play meant to be projected, acted out, performed and as such criticized. Humans take up a variety of roles (such as actor and audience) in their own life-story productions, which are then criticized in predominantly visual terms, such as behavior, dress, d  or, color and lighting. Popular cultural pressures, frequently expressed in mass-media dramas, shape the spectacle of individual and collective productions in relation to the cultural milieu of a performance. Individuals are often motivated and driven to achieve applause from their audience, thereby maintaining positive self-images. The performance devices, strategies and techniques individual minds use to master impression and anxieties have been researched by Erving Goffman, as in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life: "To the degree that the individual maintains a show before others that he himself does not believe, he can come to experience a special kind of alienation from self and a special kind of wariness of others." In the words of the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, "Others are hell".  Dream Vision makes visible the philosophical framework of factors influencing the work and workings of the mind-body-dramatic communication-adjustment.

In this sense, the dream  provides a vision and voice through which to critique the human frame stories of Dream Vision. When the spell of enchantment of communal living fails, the mind 's dis-illusionment with social reality is the result. Dis-illusionment  and ressentiment  are unconsciously projected and acted out on the communal dream screen and more consciously (for those with access to the unconscious) expressed through the thoughts in poetry, theatre and film.

My presentation will focus on the dream text itself, looking at it from a literary perspective. If the text of a dream has a literary surface and depth dimensions, then the question that can be asked is:   Where does a person 's mind enter into the story that the dream is attempting to tell   
 
The dream has many interconnected literary points of entry. This idea was already given literary voice for us by the 19^th-century French writer Eug  e Sue, whose Mysteries of Paris  uses the metaphor of prostitution as a poetic vehicle of the imagination to travel below the ingratiating   surface rituals of society. Sue 's melodramatic fiction opens up the lurid and grotesque details of sexuality, money and deviance to our vision. We are invited to see both as a spectator and as a witness the melodramatic contrasts of urban life, of civilization and its discontents. 
   

Louis Hagood

Amazing Grace . . . in Your Dreams 

Dream incubation has a long history in shamanic and religious traditions as a means of accessing the divine for healing, guidance or inspiration. Since Freud, the divine has been replaced with the unconscious, while Jung offered the Self as the personal divine in the mystical traditions. The presenter will discuss the dreamer who dreams the dream as a response to incubation questions in terms of Freud 's id, Jung 's Self Winnicott 's not me and Bion 's container as representatives of modern-day divinity. 

 

Dr. Dimitri Halley

Dreams and Hooking (up) Physical and Non-Physical Clusters of Variables

We tend to self-deceive. What if we are self-deceiving   Who is going to keep us honest   This attempt to keep ourselves honest occurs much in terms of Jung 's theory of compensation where for instance the unconscious dream-image balances the conscious attitude. Dreams are being made by a great movie maker. This movie maker uses scripts, sets and imagery to convey messages and feedback to the dreamer. So we must have that demon (shadow) in us that is going to boycott the plans of the deceiver in us. But this process doesn 't limit itself to the psyche. The body is also part of the theatre. The main contention is that the body also expresses the repressed shadow. Somatic conditions, as manifestations of the shadow, also contrive to curb and compensate the conscious one-sided ego attitude. Take for instance a case of pain in an arm (phantom) of a man who was totally in denial about his anger, whom physicians referred to the author. On becoming the arm  he started to see how the arm felt. The arm wanted to choke somebody. This compensatory process has been long developed in terms of dream images vis-  vis the conscious attitude in psychological terms. Yet these compensatory dream images have profound bearing on underlying compensatory somatic processes. Dreams will be presented which depict the compensation of the shadow in conditions as Infertility, Sinusitis, Cancer and Lupus. Dreams reveal the deeper meaning of somatic condition s providing firsthand footage of the mind-body link, at the deeper field level beneath the level of diversity (where psyche and matter appear as separate), where cross-border interaction occurs.

 

 

Amber M. Hickey, BA candidate

I 'm walking around with no clothes on 

I 'm walking around with no clothes on

Another tooth falls out

I 'm flying over the moon

And then I hear the sound of my dead grandmother 's voice

 This is a sound piece. Everyone will be the artist. I will be the facilitator. I will use technology to create a live soundscape with the voices of people in the audience and sounds from my own dreams. They will be mixed and layered and sewn together and they will eventually break apart into little pieces of the big dreams they came from.

 

Deborah Armstrong Hickey, PhD., LMFT, RPT-S   and Demi Gilbertson, MS

Dream Dolls: Invoking and Conspiring with a Dream Figure Embodied through the Medium of Dollmaking

Dream Enactments!   Conspiring with a Dream Figure Embodied in a Doll

This workshop will integrate experiential work designed to shift the participants ' consciousness towards that of a waking dream in service of capturing a dream figure, and then conspiring with the dream figure in order to steal gifts from the dream.   The process will be that of weaving waking dreams, accompanied by work in expressive media to create a doll embodying the dream figure. The workshop will culminate with enactments where the participants will conspire with the dream dolls to steal their gifts.

Demi Gilbertson, a master dollmaker, will introduce the participants to the art of making a Waschi Doll. Deborah Armstrong Hickey will facilitate the drumming journey and revisiting a dream through authentic movement. Demi and Deborah will co-lead the processes involved in the workshop.

 This workshop will be held on four consecutive days, constituting a series in which each step is essential.   Participants may even envision their process in this workshop series to constitute a mythic journey through bringing one dream figure in one dream myth to life.

The leaders have the intention to create a space in which the participants will create a sacred waking dream space in which to work, create, and invoke their dreams. Participants should wear comfortable clothes in which to move and to engage in art.

 

Deborah Armstrong HICKEY, PhD, LMFT, RPT-S  

Developing Awareness of a Personal Mythology through a Dream Education Group in a Community College Setting                   

 

 

Jan Hitchcock, PhD

Un/Common Territories:   Dreaming and Poetry

Bridging the humanities and social sciences, I will present material from an integrative review of psychological and literary perspectives on poetry and dreaming.   Relationships between poetry and dreaming include, for example, commonalities in use of image and metaphor; in the acceptance of the non-rational; in appreciation of the role of unconscious processes, reverie, and multiple meanings; and in their potential as vehicles for psychological integration.   While not all poetry draws equally from this shared territory with dreaming, and certainly other forms of creative expression bear some relationship to dreams as well, I believe there is a compelling case to be made for unique convergences between poetry and dreaming in their origin, form, process, and content. 

As reflected by millennia of documented human attention to both, production of dreams and poetry appears universal, tapping, it would seem, powerful primary origins in human experience. And there's also the cross-cultural ubiquity of the phenomena, with dreams and poetic traditions found among all varieties of peoples, including those not relying on written words.   My presentation will explore the experience and defining significance of dreaming and poetic processes alike  including how they distinctively reveal our human capacity for generating from within the individual psyche new images and meaning, enlarging the spheres to which we have access and insight, and bridging what has previously been unknown into new consciousness and creation.

Rich literatures exist, offering varied sources of material for further review and integration.   The lineages of the relevant literatures are many, including:

• Poets and literary critics drawing upon, inquiring into, and/or re-enacting dream processes in poetic creation.   Coleridge and Blake are classic examples of poets in this tradition, but more contemporary poets draw extensively and intentionally from dreams and dreaming states.
• Psychoanalysts, from Freud on, for whom dreams and poems represent defensive products, protecting the ego against anxiety and awareness of unacceptable drives, and psychoanalytically-grounded literary critics
• Jungian psychologists for whom the content of dreams represent opportunities for individuation through integration of previously unconscious parts of the self
• Psychologists, notably Hillman, advocating re-configuration of a psychology aligned with humanistic traditions, including more phenomenological engagement with images and imagination
• Practitioners with specific interest in therapeutic work incorporating creative arts (e.g., transformative language arts ) and/or dreamwork
• Philosophers and cognitive psychologists (a not so anomalous pairing) in pursuit of understanding of how it is we experience poetry, dreaming, and awareness of our selves.   

As indicated above, this presentation will draw on many literatures, including from writers who have considered in very insightful ways the interrelationships between poetry and psychology.   Most, however, have not focused specifically on poetry and dreaming, and the work of those who have (e.g., Bachelard) could very profitably now be integrated with wider disciplinary perspectives.

 

Dr. Curtiss Hoffman  

Developing the Intuition in Group Dreamwork

Jung once wrote that he found it useful to approach each dream of his analysands with absolutely no preconceived idea of what the dream might mean.   This discipline helps to eliminate the interference of the conscious mind in the dreamworking process and allows for the entry of intuitive wisdom.   Anyone who has done dreamwork for long enough is likely to have had many of what Jeremy Taylor calls "ahas" intuitive insights which help not only the dreamer, not only the person commenting on their dream, but the entire group which is working the dream.   By using the Ullman-Taylor method of group dreamwork, which involves assuming that the dreamer knows better than anyone else what his/her dream means, and then attempting to elicit the multiple meanings by a question-and-answer methodology without imposing the dreamworker 's views in an authoritative way, these intuitive sparks can be nurtured and the capacity to recognize them can be enhanced.   This is especially likely to occur in a group setting, as the group works together over an extended period (in this case, 4 days) to generate bonds and interaction patterns that resonate with one another an d their dreams also weave together in mutual patterns.   As a way of augmenting this yet further, dreams will be explored beyond the personal dimension with reference to the archetypal ideas emerging from the collective unconscious, using the method Jung referred to as amplification,  which draws historical and mythological and literary material into the orbit of the dreamwork, again in a non-authoritative manner, using the If It Were My Dream  approach developed by Ullman.

 

Dr. Curtiss Hoffman and Tobi Hoffman    

The Stuff That Dreams Are Made On: Create Your Own Dream Pillow!

Curt will begin with a brief overview of archetypal symbolism and how it occurs in dreams, mostly based upon the work of C.G. Jung.   He will then discuss how using a collaging process can bring archetypal images in dreams to life.   Tobi will show participants examples of her collages which achieve this.   She will then provide instructions on how to make a fabric collage on a pre-cut piece which can then be made into a pillow.   This portion of the workshop will take no more than 20 minutes.   Participants should bring a dream or dream image to work on.   They will be invited to choose from a wide assortment of colored and patterned fabric scraps, cut pieces of which will be used to portray the dream imagery.   They will be provided with sewing scissors and sewing machines with which they can cut out fabric pieces and affix them to the background piece of muslin fabric.   Tobi and Curt will circulate through the room during this stage, answering questions about the process or about the imagery evoked. As a last step, Tobi will use a serger to close off the pillow edges so they are ready for stuffing.   Digital photos of the pillow design and its maker will be available upon request, and (with the participant 's approval) be posted to the conference website.

 

Curtiss Hoffman, PhD with Bob Hoss, MS; Michael Schredl, PhD; Michelle Mangini, BA, SLPA. (P anel)

Dreaming in Multiple Colors  Neurophysiological, Psychological, and Cultural Considerations

Robert J Hoss, MS

Various laboratory studies [1] indicate that when awakened during a REM cycle, 80 to over 90% of the time (depending on the study) the subjects report not only visual dream activity, but that their dreams contain color either fully colored or some color imagery.   Using the UC Santa Cruz   dreambank  database (6,237 colors recalled from 15,245 dream reports), I determined that on average as humans we dominantly report the colors black and white most frequently and almost equally (20% or the time per color), and the colors red, yellow, blue and green the next most dominantly and again almost equally (about 10 % to 14% of the time per color).   As to why 85% or so of the colors we report in our dreams fall into these two groupings, there are both biological as well as psychological theories that try to offer an explanation.

First I will discuss the biological possibility.   Early psychological studies on color perception lead to the understanding that the colors red, yellow, green and blue are perceived by that brain as fundamental as opposed to mixtures of other colors.   These four colors were termed the psychological primaries.    We know, however, that the full color spectrum can be created from only three primary colors - red, green and blue (that is how our TV screens work, for example). We also know that our eyes have three color receptors (3 types of cones) with peak sensitivities near the color wavelengths of yellow-red, green and blue-violet. The opponent process theory    [9] of color perception, however, indicates that even though the rods have 3 peak wavelengths of sensitivity,   the brain processes color based on the relative presence of four colors (red, yellow, blue and green) and black and white (dark and light).   So there is a conversion that occurs in the brain/eye system that supports the concept of psychological primaries  plus black and white which may provide a biological reason why the dreaming brain is biased toward these colors in dreams.

There is a further psychological possibility, however.   Both Jung and Perls regarded the presence of a balanced pattern of these four colors in a dream as representative of an evolving state of completion within the personality [4, 5, 10].     Jung associated the primaries  with what he called the four orienting functions of consciousness: feeling (red), intuition (yellow), thinking (blue) and sensation (green). Jung also referred to a symbolic significance of black and white, with blackness representing the unconscious realm, and white or light representing consciousness or new material emerging into consciousness.

The significance of the six colors is likely a bit of both.   The brain/eye system would naturally perceive a perfect balance of red, yellow, blue, green and black and white as fully stimulating the visual system in a balanced manner thus translating those colors psychologically to a similar sense of balance.

While performing that color research, however, I determined that although this norm exists, there also exist very significant differences in dream-color reporting profiles from person to person.   We performed some preliminary or exploratory studies which indicated that the colors individuals dream of may differ from the norm based on unique emotional personality.   Furthermore, the studies gave some indication that color in dreams responds to what the dreamer is going through emotionally at the time [2].   In one study that Curt Hoffman and I worked on together, reviewing the reported colors in a series of 4,800 dreams that Curt had recorded over a period of 11 years, we were able to actually identify the two dominant periods of emotional stress that had occurred over that 11-year period [2]. 

In trying to understand the true significance of why a particular dream image takes on a particular color I performed a decade-long investigation of dreams containing color [3, 4].     I used two tools to perform the research. 

1) The first was derived from Gestalt therapy, a technique for working with a dream image using role-play which spontaneously surfaces the emotions that the dreamer associates with that image.   I scripted the technique into a 6-question approach which provides emotional information without going too deeply into a therapy situation.   So with this tool I could understand the emotions within a dream image.  

2) The second tool I used was derived from the field of color psychology.     Research in this field was designed to associate color with human physiological and emotional responses.   It essentially determined a spectrum of emotions that most humans associate with color.   This found use in the marketing and packaging and various industries that rely on subliminal emotional attractions to sell product, but it also resulted in some valuable tools such as the L  cher color test, which relates color and emotion on the basis of color preference.     I created a tabular questionnaire from the color to emotional associations derived from this field.   It contains a series of emotional statements grouped by colors, based on the emotional associations that color psychology research has found to be most common for various colors.   These emotional associations are based on how one feels emotionally in the presence of the color, not cultural or memory associations with that color.   The dreamer is asked to pick the color on the questionnaire closest to the one dreamed of and then pick the one or more statements they most connect  with, that most relate to a way they have felt recently.

When the color dream image is worked on, the emotional statements are then correlated both as to wording and as to how they relate to a waking life situation the dreamer is dealing with.   I was able to show a fairly consistent correlation between the emotional situations that surface as a dreamer works with a dream image (using the Gestalt approach), and the emotional association that the field of color psychology has generally assigned to that color.   The evidence, therefore, supports that we not only dream visually but usually in color and that the colors in our dreams combine with the dream imagery to provide an emotional modifier to that dream image in essence, that dream color paints the dream with emotion. 

The emotional nature of most dream color and dream imagery can best be understood by considering the nature and language  of the dreaming brain.   The dreaming brain is not asleep; a great deal of the brain is active and processing information.   The midbrain and limbic system, for example, has been shown to be very active in the dream state, perhaps even more at times than in the waking state [6].   Among the many functions of the limbic system, perhaps one of its dominant functions is processing emotion and emotional memories and associations.   The amygdala (part of the limbic system), for example, functions to associate sensory information such as imagery with emotion [7].     It does this in the waking state so as to act as an early-warning system in order that we react quickly to danger.   In the sleep state it is reasonable to suggest that it also performs emotion-to-imagery associations.   This may extend to color-to-emotion associations.   Both the neurological research and the evidence from my own work, in correlating color dream imagery and emotion, suggests that dream imagery and dream color are highly stimulated by emotion and emotional memories. Many other psychologists and researchers also consider dreaming as related to emotional processing.   Ernest Hartmann, for example, contends that the central image  of the dream reflects the emotions of the dreamer and the intensity of that image reflects the intensity of the emotions[8].   Furthermore, the combination of imagery and color creates a dream image that can, if understood, richly reveal to t he dreamer the unresolved emotional business of the day that the dream is dealing with, thus permitting the waking ego to involve itself in supporting this self-healing process.

References:

[1] R. Van De Castle, Our Dreaming Mind, Ballantine Books, New York 1994

[2] R. Hoss, The Appearance of Color in Dreams , Dream Time, 16:4 (1999), 10

[3] R. Hoss, The Significance of Color in Dreams , Presented at the IASD Conference 2004 Copenhagen

[4] R. Hoss, Dream Language: Self-Understanding through Imagery and Color, Chapter 9,   Innersource, 2005.

[5] C. G. Jung, Man and His Symbols, Dell Publishing Co. NY, NY, 1973

[6]   Hobson et al., Dreaming and the Brain,  Sleep and Dreaming, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2003, pp 1 - 50.

[7] 38. J. J. Ratey, A User 's Guide to the Brain, Vintage Books, New York, 2001

[8] R. Hoss, Dream Language,   Innersource, 2005, 45.

[9] H.R. Schiffman, Sensation and Perception: an Integrated Approach, John Wiley & Sons, New York 1976, 216-220

[10] F. S. Perls, Gestalt Therapy Verbatim, Bantam Books, 1974, 27-76

 

Curtiss Hoffman, PhD

Color is something we tend to take for granted.   We may differ on our naming of subtle shades of color, but unless we are blind or color-blind, the basic 6 or 7 primary and secondary colors are things we tend to agree upon.   While we take seven-colored rainbows for granted, the number of colors people see in the rainbow turns out to be partly a matter of cultural conditioning.   Physics tells us that the visible light spectrum is actually a continuous band, without coherent divisions between wavelengths.   Each culture determines how to divide this band into discrete colors, and it is surely no accident that the number of colors Westerners perceive in the rainbow is the same as that of the days of the week and also the same as the number of "moving" heavenly bodies, the planets, which are visible to the naked eye. 

The color red is often used as a mediating term in the fundamental opposition between light and darkness, white and black, and it often stands for color generally.   Victor Turner has explored the widespread cultural classification of colors into white, black, and red.   Among the Ndembu of Angola and Zambia,

These are the only colours for which [they] possess primary terms.   Terms for other colours are either derivatives from these...or consist of descriptive and metaphorical phrases, as in the case of 'green ', meji amatamba, which means 'water of sweet potato leaves '.   Very frequently, colours which we would distinguish from white, red and black are by Ndembu linguistically identified by them.   Blue cloth, for example, is described as 'black cloth ',  and yellow or orange objects are lumped together as 'red '.[1] 

The significations of these three primary  colors for the Ndembu are common to many cultures: red is feminine and associated with menstrual blood, while white is associated with masculine political and ritual power, and black with death and sorcery.   Turner has followed this common set through the mythologies of many cultures, ethnographic as well as archaeological. 

In the ancient Middle East, the Egyptians referred to the Mediterranean Sea as The Great Green.  In Sumer, the word for the dark blue stone lapis lazuli meant dark stone.  For the Sumerians, there were only five principal colors white, black, red, yellow, and green each   of which corresponded to one of the Four Quarters of the universe plus the center, the sacred city of Nippur [2, 3].   Homer repeatedly refers to the Aegean Sea as the wine-dark sea [4].   The dye known as Tyrian purple, derived from the murex snail and used to color the garments of members of the imperial family in Rome, looks crimson to our eyes. We should not imagine that the visual apparatus or optical cortex of the eastern Mediterranean Bronze Age and Iron Age peoples differed from our own in any significant degree.   Therefore we must interpret these differences as being cultural.

The division into black, white, yellow, and red is also emblematic of the four stages of the alchemical process:   nigredo, albedo, citrinitas, and rubedo.   Jung notes that eventually the citrinitas phase dropped out of common usage, leaving only black, white, and red [5].   

An old Irish poem describes Fionn MacCumhaill 's wolfhound in the following terms:

                       Yellow legs had Bran,

                       Both sides black and her belly white,

                       Above her loins a speckled back,

                       And two crimson ears very red. [6]

These four colors are also very prominent in Native American cosmologies across the North American continent.   The best-known example is surely Black Elk 's famous vision, which may be considered as a dream or at least an altered state, since as a 9-year-old boy Black Elk was unconscious for an extended period of time when he had this vision.   Throughout the vision he encounters groupings of horses in fours:   black, white, sorrel, and buckskin, representing the west, north, east, and south directions, respectively.   In the course of the vision there are many other references to a four-fold division of the universe, with a possible six-fold division if the above (blue, sky) and the below (green, earth) are added.   These are the 6 Grandfathers  whom Black Elk meets and who empower him.[7] 

George Hammell has emphasized the importance which colored items had to Native peoples in the Northeast, because of the symbolism inherent in their color.   He has attempted to position these objects within the semiotic context of the cultures:

&whiteness (which also connotes transparency) and sky blue-greenness connote the cognitive and social aspect of life, the purposiveness of mind, knowledge, and greatest being, as do light, bright, and white things generally.   These colors are good to think (with) . . . Within the northeastern Woodland Indians ' mythical realities, material substance is a manifestation of color, rather than color being simply a physical property of substance.   White light, white shell, white flint, white wolf, white otter, and other white entities form a ritually semantic set, because they are material manifestations of whiteness . . . Whiteness, sky blue-greenness, redness, and blackness invest the entities of which they are perceptually salient attributes with numinosity; that is with ideational, as well as with aesthetic, significance. [8] 

He has further emphasized the importance of white, black and red as representative of states of being:

The colors white, black, and red potentially organize ritual states-of-being and ritual material culture into either triadic or dyadic contrastive-complementary sets.   White social states-of-being, black asocial states-of-being, and red anti-social states-of-being form the one contrastive-complementary, triadic set; white and red social states-of-being in contrast to black asocial states-of-being form one dyadic opposition; and white social states-of-being in contrast to black and red, anti-social states-of-being form the other. . . for example, white (-ness), the color of (day)light and thus of life itself, is the most potent color, and the most highly evaluated color if that potency is consecrated to socially constructive purposes.   However, white and red are both potent colors, since they are generally identified with the sentient aspect and the animate aspect (i.e., blood) of life, respectively. . . .When conjoined, white and red manifest the sentient and animate aspect of social states-of-being, and are most frequently contrasted to black states-of-being, characterized by the absence of sentience and animacy, as in states of mourning. [8] 

In terms of material culture, Hammell considers that this semiotic system,

most probably accounts for the differential and deferential disposal in mortuary contexts during the Terminal Archaic and during the Early and Middle Woodland periods of white (marine) shell, white freshwater pearls, white (~ transparent) rock crystal, white chalcedony, white (muscovite) mica, white free-state metals (silver, galena); red cedar, red ocher (hematite), red chalcedony, red jasper, red pipestone (catlinite), red native copper; and black charcoal, black obsidian, black chalcedony (and chert), black (biotite) mica, and black meteoric iron.  [9]

In fact, these materials occur at Native American archaeological sites, including one excavated by the author which served as transit stations for the trans-shipment of these strongly colored items to ritual locations.[10]

Thus, in addition to the neurophysiologically determined color system of red, green, blue, and yellow, there appears to be a widespread second system of four colors:   red, white, black, and a fourth color which varies among blue, green, and yellow.   The attributions of these colors to the directions and the elements varies widely, and appears to be somewhat due to local geographic or environmental parameters, but the set remains constant as a set of four with these largely invariant place-holders.

These colors also appear in dreams as sets of four.   I will use my own database of ca. 7,500 entries, as well as smaller inventories of student dreams collected during my Spring 2008 Culture and Consciousness course, to explore how these two sets of colors appear.   My hypothesis is that the particular set of four colors which appears in dreams is at least somewhat dependent upon the dream 's content and cultural context.

 

References:

[1]Victor Turner, Colour Class ification in Ndembu Ritual , in Michael Banton, ed., Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Religion.   London:   Tavistock Publishers, 1966, 47-48.

[2]Friedrich Boll, Carl Bezold, and Wilhelm Gundel, Sternglaube und Sternbedeutung.   Stuttgart Germany:                          B.G. Teubner, 1966.

[3]Alfred Jeremias, Handbuch der altorientalischen Geisteskultur.   Leipzig Germany:   J. C. Hinrich 'sche Buchhandlung, 1913.

[4] Homer, The Odyssey.   Trans. Richard Latimore.   New York:   Harper and Row, 1967

[5]Carl G. Jung, Psychology and Alchemy.   Collected Works vol. 12.   Bollingen Series XX.   Trans. R.F.C. Hull.   Princeton NJ:   Princeton University Press, 1968.

[6]Kathleen Hoagland, ed., A Thousand Years of Irish Poetry.   Old Greenwich CT:   Devin-Adair Co., 1957.

[7]John Neihardt, Black Elk Speaks:   Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux.   University of Nebraska Press, 1932.

[8]George Hammell, Mythical Realities and European Contact in the Northeast during the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries.    Man in the Northeast 33:63-87 (1987).

[9]George Hammell, The Iroquois and the World 's Rim:   Speculations on Color, Culture, and Contact.    The American Indian Quarterly 16:451-469 (1992).

[10]Curtiss Hoffman, Late to Transitional Archaic Exchange in Eastern Massachusetts.    Archaeology of Eastern North America 34:91-104 (2006).

 

Michael Schredl, PhD

Several studies carried out in the first half of the twentieth century had large numbers of persons who reported that they did not see colors in their dreams. Schwitzgebel (2003) repeated the Middleton study over 50 years later and found that only 4.4% of the participants reported no colors in their dreams, compared to 40% in the earlier study (Middelton, 1942).

The present study was designed to investigate whether memory processes play a rol e in explaining why some persons state that their dreams are black and white.

Method. The sample included 49 persons whose mean age was 21.8 years (SD = 3.4). These 40 women and 9 men were mainly psychology students. First, the participants completed the dream questionnaire including items eliciting the frequency of color dreams, black and white dreams and dreams without remembering colors explicitly. Then the two visual memory tasks were carried out. At the end of the session the participants received the dream record sheet which they were to return to one of the experimenters after recording the next dream directly upon awakening. Of 49 participants, 32 persons returned their dream record sheets.

Results and Discussion. Retrospectively, the participants estimated that 59.2% of the dream objects were colored. The percentage for colored objects, however, was significantly higher for the dream reports where the colors were elicited directly upon awakening (82.8%).

The percentage of explicitly recalled black and white dream elements was very small; 9.4% of the dreams in retrospect and 2.7% in the diary dreams. Dream-recall frequency and the score of the circus-picture task were related significantly to two of the percentages regarding black and white dreams

To summarize, the present study indicates that memory plays an important role in explaining why some persons say their dreams are black and white. It would be very interesting to carry out studies including extensive training of color memory in waking life and in dream recall in order to investigate whether highly trained persons still have some dreams or dream elements that are in black and white. In order to control for all possible biases, it would be necessary to elicit whether the participants have ever watched black and white films (since the age of first regular exposure to color TV and movies affect the percentage of black and white dreams). The continuity hypothesis (cf. Schredl, 2003) would predict that at least a small portion of dream elements might be black and white if related experiences were present in the waking life of the participant.

References

Middleton, W. C. (1942). The frequency with which a group of unselected college students experiences colored dreaming and colored hearing. Journal of General Psychology, 27, 221-229.

Schredl, M. (2003). Continuity between waking and dreaming: A proposal for a mathematical model. Sleep and Hypnosis, 5, 38-52.

Schwitzgebel, E. (2003). Do people still report dreaming in black and white   An attempt to replicate a questionnaire from 1942. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 96, 25-29.

 

 

Ruth Hoskins, PhD, HHS, LCSW, BCD  

Research on Dream Incubation and Techniques to Solve Problems during Sleep

Research will be presented on dream incubation. Effortless Meditation Therapy (EMT) used during the day to reduce stress and stimulate night-time dreams to solve problems during sleep will be taught. A three-step dream incubation model to encourage the unconscious mind to solve problems during sleep will be compared to the eight-step model used in the research. The results: At the conclusion of the four-month research project, three quarters of the participants recalled dreams, and 100% of the participants reported that the application of the dream incubation technique stimulated dreams, helped solve problems and improved emotional, physical, and spiritual health. A revised three-step dream incubation model and the benefits of Effortless Meditation Therapy (EMT) to stimulate night-time dreams will be presented. The techniques will show that incubating a dream for the purpose of solving a problem during sleep may help solve problems.

 

Caroline L. Horton    

Diary Study Investigations of the Retrieval of Dream Memories

Objectives:

Humans dream every night although their memories for these exp eriences are very poor. Whilst the physiology of the sleeping brain impairs the encoding of dreams, retrieval processes depend upon autobiographical functioning. The retrieval of dreams was compared to the retrieval of waking autobiographical events in order to explore the profile of remembering dreams. It was predicted that dream memories would be less recallable than events although similarly recognisable, if the memory trace had been encoded but was merely difficult to retrieve.

Design:

Two diary studies were conducted to systematically compare dream and waking event recall and recognition over time. Experiment 1 involved retrospective dreams and events being reported in a fluency task. Experiment 2 required that current dreams and events be recorded in a diary style, matching the number of dream and event memories, and their time of occurrence. The diary design has been demonstrated to be a reliable method in dream research and overcomes ethical concerns when requesting dream detail more intimately. 

Methods:

Whilst 63 Psychology students were recruited, only 25 participants completed the two full experiments. Memory templates were provided. Participants were instructed to generate at least 5 and up to 15 dreams and events out of the laboratory, from the past (at least a week old) for Experiment 1. Templates were completed as soon as waking as was feasible for Experiment 2. Two weeks after materials had been returned memories were recalled as cued by dream and event titles. A week later sentences from reports were re-presented in a recognition task, along with an equal number of lure sentences, matched for characteristic and content features.

Results:

Participants recorded an average of 10 dreams and 9 events in each experiment. Dreams and events were compared along dimensions of characteristic ratings and mode of retrieval. Retrospective dreams were less recallable than retrospective dreams (Experiment 1), whilst current diary dreams were as similarly recalla ble as events (Experiment 2). All memories were similarly recognisable. In addition dreams were significantly less salient and comprehensible than events, but significantly more surprising and negatively emotional.

Conclusions:

Retrospective dreams seemed not to have been rehearsed as much as retrospective events. A presence of retrieval cues and rehearsal over time ensures that dreams are as accessible as waking autobiographical memories. Dream salience also improves comprehensibility as well as a likelihood of the dream being initially encoded. A positive attitude towards dreams overcomes encoding deficits. Whilst dreams are experientially unique and subject to vast individual differences, they are autobiographical memories which are encoded, controlled, manipulated and retrieved in comparable ways to waking event memories. Cognitive psychology can therefore offer much in the consideration of dream generation, theorising and methodology.

 

 

Bob Hoss, MS and Lynne Hoss, MA, EHP

The Dream to Freedom Technique: Opening the Borders between Dreamwork and Energy Psychology

According to many researchers, theorists and psychologists, dreams tend to focus on the most important unfinished emotional processing of the day. Dreamwork has accordingly become an important means of quickly and effectively identifying a critical issue, as opposed to peeling away at surface-level problems and emotional layers until the critical issue surfaces.   While dreamwork is useful for identifying or experiencing inner emotions, unless it is part of a more encompassing therapeutic process, dreamwork by itself does not necessarily deal with those emotions or reducing the barriers to progress that they impose.     The field of Energy Psychology, on the other hand, provides some relatively simple approaches for reducing emotional conditions and stress once the condition is identified.   By opening the borders  and bridging these the two disciplines, using specific appro aches which complement each other, both identification plus reduction of emotional barriers and stress can be affected.

This bridging of disciplines may also have a natural neurological synergy.   While dreams appear to reflect the nocturnal processing of unresolved emotional issues, involving the limbic system among others, energy psychology targets similar centers in the brain with methods intended to reduce emotional stress and anxiety.   Neural plasticity theory and clinical reports indicate that energy psychology is able to produce neurological shifts which neutralize emotional patterns in the limbic system, formed when the amygdala responds to waking life experiences. 

In this workshop, participants will learn both a comprehensive dreamworking technique as well as a specific Energy Psychology protocol  and learn how to combine them to reduce stressful emotions that may surface while working with a dream.   The workshop will demonstrate:   1. a scripted 6-step Gestalt-based dreamwork method for identifying the emotional issue the dream is working on;   2. a unique new application of the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) to the dreamwork process, which uses self-stimulation of acupressure points while holding the problem in mind, to reduce any emotional stress from the issue the dreamwork reveals; and 3. a means for using the dream for creating a closure metaphor, and defining next steps for personal progress, once the stressful barriers have been reduced.   A brief discussion of the supporting research and some exercises, illustrating the basis of the combined methodologies, is provided in the first half hour of the workshop.   This will be followed by a case study demonstration of the technique followed by a step-by-step experiential session, for those attendees who wish to participate and privately work on one of their own dreams.   The workshop will include a handout and worksheet.

 

 

Diana Ilnicki, MA, BSW      

The Link between Past and Present Trauma in Nightmares

For the public at large, there is a certain degree of appreciation for the role of nightmares that arise in the context of traumatic experiences.   When nightmares contain elements that seem out of place for a given event, the dreamer 's attention is drawn to the anomalies. This makes it problematic to wave off the dreams as specifically related to the identified trauma.   If the dreamer can be supported in taking a closer look at the dreams, he or she may discover that, in addition to processing the recent negative experiences, the dreams are also referring back to previous traumas that had never been consciously addressed.   Such was the case with several students from Dawson College following the shooting that occurred on the school grounds, September 13, 2006.       

Two of these students originated from South Africa, one having survived the genocide in Rwanda and the other having lived under military